Monday, 5 September 2016

This deeply moving and tragic testimony was submitted as a comment last week. It merits its own post.

"As someone who had a child (who died at the age of 21 months in a car
accident, never comprehending what was happening to him), I'd like to
say a few things.

The first is this: it was the single greatest
joy I ever experienced. And he was overjoyed to be alive. You could see
it in his face and how he ran about. I never loved anyone or anything
more. I don't think I could have. I was more alive and joyous and
ecstatic than I had ever been. I delighted in his growth and his
intelligence, strength and courage. It was likely the best time of my
life. And I'm grateful for it.

Then he died. Run over by his mom
in a driveway. Totally not her fault. She thought he was playing with me
somewhere else and could not see him (she was backing up). I had
forgotten what my wife was doing and never thought he was in danger
where he was. Neither of us was drunk, or high, or anything else like
that. Kids played on that road all the time. We were just doing what we
always did together. Then he died.

That was the worst pain I ever
experienced. I won't go into it. It was beyond awful, more painful than
when I almost lost a thumb to a wood splitter. I thought I would die
for most of it. I just could not believe that my beautiful son was gone,
just like that. I had brought him into the world only to die at 21
months old. I was (in other's eyes, not just my own) a great father, as
these things go, and heaven knows his mom was lovely. I loved him
dearly, more than I had words for. I would have literally died to
protect him, and that is no joke. But that choice was not given to me. I
had no control at all, in the end, other than the obvious things like
loving him, educating him, and not hitting or abusing him or wrecking
his sense of self and belonging. Life had cars, and diseases, and other
life-threatening things I could not stop. But somehow I had forgotten
that, as my wife and I had had fairly happy childhoods and had survived.
Not so for him.

As time has gone by, I have thought about
whether I had any right to bring a person into this world, even when
circumstances are (and they were) good, or at least as good as they
could have possibly been. Given what I have learned about our condition
in the universe, and the extreme evidence brought about by my son's
early death, at this point I would have to say 'no'. I don't. Even
though I think he would have had a really good life had he lived to see
it, and he did have about the best of all possible worlds when he was
alive, I don't know that for a fact. I just wish I had thought about
this before he lived, and died, as much as I loved him and as much as I
wish he was still here long enough to say 'sorry' to and wish him on his
way (even though I know in my head he cannot hear me and is now just
bones). I'll live with what happened forever. And as beautiful as he was
and as great as it was to have him in our lives, I hope and pray (ha!)
that I'll never do that again. It's not fair. The next one could die
too, or worse.

Thanks for listening. This seemed an appropriate place to tell this story."